I was listening to the Cubs-Indians spring training game earlier today and Travis Wood was pitching for the Cubs. All I could think was how as loyal as we are to are teams, I think everyone has a few players that they enjoy who they may or may not want on their team. Maybe they're fun to watch, maybe they're just charismatic in interviews, maybe they're just an underdog you want to root for.

In this case, it's personal. My sister and I went to a Cubs/Reds game in 2010. Our father was battling cancer and he had been having a rough time with chemo and radiation. luckily, almost every time I came home, dad was pretty stable (until the very end). We thought it would be a nice surprise to lift his spirits if we could take one of his Reds hats to the game and try to get it signed.

We got to the park early, went to the area by the dugout during batting practice. Ideally, we wanted to get Joey Votto or Brandon Phillips, but we realized quickly that probably wasn't going to happen. We talked to a few people near us, told them what we were doing. Players kept coming off the field, none of them were signing. Travis Wood signed a few and he started to turn away when one of the people standing near (who we'd been talking to), said "Hey Travis, sign one more...this girl's dad has cancer".

He turned around, signed my dad's hat, asked about him, what kind of cancer he had, how he was doing, how long he'd been a Reds fan. The whole conversation lasted just about a minute, but it meant the world to me and my family.